Lindsey Graham, Last Bipartsan Bridge Still Standing?

My latest Capital Journal looks at a man who sometimes seems to be the last person still trying bipartisanship in Washington:

As allied armies marched toward Germany in the closing days of World War II, Adolf Hitler ordered the bridges crossing the Rhine River blown up to slow the advance. And so they were, until just one was left standing at Remagen.

In Washington today, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham resembles that span at Remagen: He sometimes looks like the last bridge left standing to connect the two parties in an increasingly polarized capital.

That’s either a courageous or a foolhardy position in the wake of the vicious health-care battle. Yet the South Carolina senator stands firm. In recent days he has emerged as the lawmaker trying hardest to find a bipartisan solution to two of the toughest problems on the docket: a policy for terrorism detainees and an energy bill to reduce both dependence on foreign oil and greenhouse-gas emissions.

At a time when lawmakers are more likely to be attacked than lionized for trying to work across party lines, Mr. Graham is quietly, though sometimes grudgingly, respected within his caucus, and admired inside the White House for his bravery.

He is hardly acting out of blind love for President Barack Obama’s administration. In an interview, he calls the president “a very polarizing guy,” and in a weekend appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” he excoriated the Democrats’ recently passed health bill in terms that would have made the Republican National Committee proud.

Instead, he says, “I have taken the approach that, no matter how upset I am about health care, when it comes to national security, you have to work together.” And he regards both terrorism detentions and energy as national-security matters.